Needless to say, when late last year the building went on the market, it didn’t sit long before Salem Welding scooped it up.

The company announced Monday that it has acquired the property and moved into it.

“We were working with 3,000 square feet of space,” Baker said of the plant at 475 Prospect St. “We have too much work and too many people in such a small place.”

Business at Salem Welding has steadily increased over the past seven years, and the company was looking to expand into another building near its current plant, Baker said.

“We’re landlocked here right now,” he said. “What’s ideal about the new site is that there are five acres, so there’s opportunity for more buildings and to expand.” Moreover, the site is directly across from 475 Prospect St., making it a convenient location for the company.

The expansion will accommodate additional heavy fabricating work the company expects to attract over the next several years, Baker said.

“We’re still doing a little bit of oil and gas – mostly infrastructure work,” he reported. “We want to keep doing the heavy fabricating that we’re doing now and become more fluid in our processes. It’s still a lot of steel mill work, building machinery, repairing or adding to the machinery.”

A division of Caterpillar Inc.’s methane engine operations occupied the building before Salem Welding bought it, but those operations were consolidated, so Caterpillar no longer needed the building. “We were able to move right in after they moved out,” Baker said.